Realexistierende Posterwerbsgesellschaft? : Aufweichung und Aufrechterhaltung der Erwerbsnorm in ländlichen Peripherien

The debate about the shortage of skilled workers in Germany obscures the broader issue of diminished labour demand in industrialized societies, which is reflected in underemployment, hidden unemployment and state-subsidized employment in addition to the consolidation of long-term unemployment. This article considers these developments as expressions of long-term structural changes in the labour market. They illustrate an increasing decoupling of global economic and employment trends and materialize disparately across geographical regions. By examining four structurally weak regions in Germany, the article explores the declining livelihood security and social integration through waged labour in rural peripheries. Local labour market policies respond to this crisis of social reproduction through contradictory „fixes“. On the one hand, they seem to adhere to the wage norm, while on the other hand, they reorganize work in ways that weaken traditional forms of employed/waged labour. In this pendulum movement between softening and restoring the employment norm, the local welfare state itself becomes the co-producer of a post-wage-work society. The article shows how new forms of post wage work, under current conditions, go hand in hand with precarisation and impoverishment, while the contradictory approaches of local labour market policies simultaneously enable subversive and critical reinterpretations of wage labour. The latter, as this article concludes, should serve as the reference point for any future social policy aiming to enforce and realize the emancipatory potentials of a post-work society.